


Know Who You Are

by YankingAwry



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Gen, that one, the one that absolutely pulverises your ass, this is essentially moana's POV of that final scene, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 03:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13022019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YankingAwry/pseuds/YankingAwry
Summary: Te Ka stands there, flaming hair sending spirals of ash into the sky even as she remains stock-still. The world has fallen silent. Her fiery eyes widen. Then, she spasms with rage andscreams, flinging herself to ocean floor and coming for Moana, coming for her on all fours like a creature possessed.Moana walks towards her, singing.“I have crossed the horizon to find you--”Te Ka is coming for Moana; but she doesn’t know that Moana is coming for Te Ka, too.





	Know Who You Are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [toxicsemicolon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/toxicsemicolon/gifts), [graceebooks](https://archiveofourown.org/users/graceebooks/gifts).



> ames and grace (thanks, you guys ;_; <3) wouldn't stop posting about this movie & the soundtrack, so i revisited moana during my study break and wept like a busted pipe. since then i've watched [this scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4QuKwfv6Wk), conservatively, a million times. the fic is a one-shot of moana restoring te fiti's heart.

 

 

Moana scans the cavernous, murky shape, now sunken deep into the ocean, marking the outline of where Te Fiti had once curled in slumber. She blinks, willing away the despair she tastes on the roof of her mouth: this place is empty. Te Fiti is not here. The island is gone, long gone.

And in her despair Moana turns towards Te Ka--and stills.

As the swirling clouds of ash clear, she sees the crude spiral carved into Te Ka’s chest. _Oh_. Moana uncurls her fingers from the heartstone in her hand, where it glows brighter than it ever has; even brighter than when she jumped headlong into dark waters and swam towards a dot of brilliant green, lungs seizing from a lack of air, but no fear in her strange heart, no; only this chant in her chest, over and over: _I am Moana_.

The heartstone glows bright. It knows how close it is.

And Moana--Moana is beginning to understand. She sees Te Ka rear back in wild, incandescent fury, a wicked fireball in its-- _her--_ grip, ready to strike. The clouds around her crackle with ozone, with deadly lightning.

Moana raises her arm, high in the air. A solitary ray of sunlight hits the heartstone, and it beams a silent signal across the ocean.

Te Ka freezes. Almost unbidden, she turns her monstrous head towards the light. Slowly, her shoulders slump. The fireball slips out her fingers. Moana lowers her arm and treads down the uneven track, the basalt rough under her steady feet. And when she reaches the place where water laps at broken rock, she speaks.

She speaks to the ocean that chose her, and asks for help one last time.

“Let her come to me.”

The ocean sweeps back as if releasing a long-held breath: tremendous, rolling movements of spray and foam crash and build, raising up towering walls of blue, leaving bare sand and glistening rock in their retreating wake. And when the path is finally cleared, the ocean walls ripple, just once: a single quiver of anticipation.

Te Ka stands there, flaming hair sending spirals of ash into the sky even as she remains stock-still. The world has fallen silent. Her fiery eyes widen. Then, she spasms with rage and _screams_ , flinging herself to ocean floor and coming for Moana, coming for her on all fours like a creature possessed.  

Moana walks towards her, singing.

 

“ _I have crossed the horizon to find you_ \--”

 

Te Ka is coming for Moana; but she doesn’t know that Moana is coming for Te Ka, too.

 

“ _I know your name--”_

Moana’s feet sink into wet sand, squelching between her toes; the sensation is familiar, it is second home. If she closes her eyes, she could be walking from the shore line to that shaded grove, the one whose leafy fronds part and lead the way into Motunui's bustling heart.

She does not close her eyes. Te Ka approaches, clawing forward, kicking up storms of sand, as Moana climbs a stranded boulder.  

 

“ _They have stolen the heart from inside you_ \--”

 

Empathy thunders through Moana’s body as she sings, and the force of it almost brings her to her knees. She may have been warned away from the ocean; but Te Ka has been kept in _chains_. Te Ka cannot touch the ocean without her limbs curdling into basalt, cracking apart and falling away; she cannot touch the ocean for agony.

She cannot touch the ocean.

The ocean that once spread her life across its waves, and brought back ships and explorers in gratitude. Does Te Ka know? Can she remember a time when she wasn’t--hatred, and loneliness?

Moana straightens, the heartstone in her fist.

Te Ka is almost upon her now; opening her gaping maw wider still, the hot-white light of molten lava pouring out.

 

“ _But this does not define you--”_

A dark, roiling vortex of ash and dust descends upon Moana, whipping her skirt and hair. And as this inferno blows past her, and away, she keeps singing.

 

“ _This is not who you are--”_

 

Because she knows now, and she sees that Te Ka knows too; sees it in the widening of her eyes, in the way she drops down in front of Moana and blackens all over, now smoking softly like dying embers. She knows what Te Ka feels, this impossible grip of certainty and terror; Moana has felt it too. She felt it when she drove her oar into the ocean and found herself halting it an inch from the water’s surface, her chest heaving.

 

 _Why do you hesitate_ , Gramma had asked.

 _I don’t know_ , she had replied, lost. 

 

The moment is suspended, like a constellation of stars. And gently, creakingly, Te Ka bows her mighty head.

 

_“You know who you are.”_

Moana puts one, tentative hand on the bridge of Te Ka’s nose: oh. It isn’t hot; just overly warm, in a pleasant way. Like something that’s been sitting out in the sun too long. She finally closes her eyes and touches her head to Te Ka’s--to Te Fiti’s--and says, quietly: “Who you _truly_ are.” And with her other hand, Moana reaches out, and gives Te Fiti her heart back.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> just in case: 'know who you are' is the title track of the actual song that plays in this scene.  
> thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!


End file.
